Archives for December 24, 2018

Many theories of art include the creator
of the work as a critical part of sorting art from non-art. An excellent
example of this is Leo Tolstoy’s
theory of art. As he sees it, the creation of art requires two steps. First,
the creator must evoke in their self a feeling they have once experienced. Second,
by various external means (movement, colors, sounds, words, etc.) the creator must
transmit that feeling to others so that can be infected by them. While there is
more to the theory, such as ruling out directly causing feelings (like punching
someone in anger that makes them angry in turn), this is the key part for deciding
whether AI created works can be art. Given Tolstoy’s theory, if an AI cannot
feel an emotion, then it cannot create art. This is because it cannot evoke a
feeling it has experienced nor can it infect others with that feeling. For it
does not feel. However, if an AI could feel emotion, then it could create art—under
Tolstoy’s definition. The known AI systems of today clearly do not feel, hence
the works they create would not be art. But what about the future?

While the focus of research is on
artificial intelligence, there is also interest in artificial emotions—or at
least the appearance of emotions. As such, there could be an AI system that
produces music, poems or paintings and seems to express emotion. In the context
of Tolstoy’s theory, the key question would be whether it feels emotion or
merely appears to feel. Interestingly, the same question also arises for human
artists for this is a variant of the problem of other minds. This is the
philosophical problem of determining whether other beings think. In this
variant, the problem of other hearts, the challenge is determining whether other
beings feel.

Tests have already been created for
discerning intelligence such as Descartes’ language test and the famous Turing Test.
While it might be objected that a being could pass such tests by faking
intelligence, the obvious reply is that faking intelligence so well would
require intelligence. To use an obvious analogy, if I could “fake” successfully
performing complex repairs on various vehicles over and over it would be odd to
say that I was faking—in what way would my fakery differ from having skill? The
same would apply to intelligence. As such, theories of art that are based on
intelligence rather than emotion would allow for a means to test whether an AI
could produce art.

Testing for emotions is rather more
challenging since a being could adequately fake emotions by knowing how to
respond without feeling them. There are, after all, humans who do this. Some
are actors, some are sociopaths. Presumably some are both. As such, testing for
emotion (as opposed to testing for responses) is rather problematic. Because of
this, if Tolstoy’s theory or other emotional based theory is used to define
art, then it seems impossible to know whether a work created by an AI would be
art. In fact, it is worse than that.

Since the problem of other hearts and
minds applies to humans, any theory of art that requires knowing what the
artist felt (or thought) leaves us forever guessing—it seems impossible to know
if the artist was feeling a specific feeling or feeling at all. It is possible to
take a more practical approach and make guesses about what an artist might have
been feeling and whether this is what the work is conveying, and this weak standard
would certainly make it easier to regard AI created works as art.

Critics of Tolstoy have made the obvious
criticism that artists can create works that seem to be art without meeting his
requirements. That is, an artist might have felt a different emotion from what the
work seems to convey. For example, a depressed and suicidal musician might write
a happy and upbeat song affirming the joy of life. Or the artist might have
created the work without any particular emotion in their heart. Because of
these and many other reasons, Tolstoy’s theory does not seem to offer the true
and ultimate account of art. That said, he does provide an excellent starting
point for a general theory of AI and art in the context of defining art in
terms of the artist. While the devil lies in the details, any artist focused
theory of art can be addressed in the following manner.

If an AI can have the qualities an
artist must have to create art, then an AI could create art. The challenge is
sorting out what these qualities must be and determining if an AI has or even
can have them. If an AI cannot have the qualities an artist must have to create
art, then it cannot be an artist and cannot create art. As such, there is a
straightforward template for applying artist focused theories of art to AI
works. But, as noted in the previous essay, this just allows one to know what
the theory says about the work—the question always remains as to whether the
theory is the one true view. In the next essay I will look at work focused
approaches to art.